


The Impossible Twins

by YaYaSestrahood



Category: BioShock Infinite, Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 02:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8950615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YaYaSestrahood/pseuds/YaYaSestrahood
Summary: In an infinite number of universes, she was Sarah.In an infinite number of universes, she was Helena.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_other_lutece_sister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_other_lutece_sister/gifts).



> My attempt at Sarah and Helena as the Lutece twins. It involved a lot of Youtube and Bioshock wikis, and I'm still sort of confused as to how the Lutece twins work, so it's probably safer to say these two are Lutece-ish. I TRIED. I mean, uh, merry Christmas, friend!
> 
> IMPORTANT UPDATE A YEAR LATER: Check out this [amazing amazing art](https://katsadako.tumblr.com/post/165059741702/so-a-while-back-my-wonderful-writin-buddy) of Sarah and Helena Lutece. Wowzers.

“Heads again,” Sarah noted, once Mr. Dewitt was out of earshot. “What are the odds?”

She realized her mistake immediately.

“Fifty percent,” Helena said, quick as a gunshot. To Helena, a rhetorical question was a question like any other: meant to be answered, and answered to the fullest extent.

“ _Approximately_ fifty percent. Even if we assume both results are equally likely, there are more than just two possibilities. The coin lands on its side. A bird catches the coin in--”

“Alright, smart-arse. You know what I meant.”

Helena chuckled to herself. At least _she_ was amused.

“Yes. Thirty-three times in a row. The odds are one in eight-point-five-nine billion. Approximately.”

“Great. Cheers.” Sarah sighed. Hopefully, she would take the hint.

“But to say they were “in a row” isn’t quite right. Our perception of linear time is--”

Sarah groaned loudly, catching the attention of several passers-by. Helena froze, stunned.

“Sorry,” Sarah said. Maybe that had been slightly over-the-top.

“Y’know I love these chats, but we should get going, yeah?”

Helena clicked her tongue, chiding.

“Always in such a hurry, Sarah. Why not stop and _exist_ for a minute? We have time.”

And before Sarah could respond, Helena was off, practically skipping out into the plaza. It was times like these Sarah could hardly believe they were the same person. One girl, raised by separate parents in separate environments in separate timelines.

In an infinite number of universes, she was Sarah.

In an infinite number of universes, she was Helena.

One could say it was fate that led them both to a career in quantum physics, but they understood it for what it was: a natural result of the infinite possibility space.

Helena was chatting animatedly with a young woman behind a street cart when Sarah caught up with her. Helena’s hands shot behind her back as she noticed her approaching.

“Close your eyes, sestra.”

Helena’s lips were squeezed tight between her teeth, the worst poker face in the world.

“What’s this about?” Sarah asked.

Helena said nothing; just bounced on her heels and waited patiently for Sarah to finally give up and close her eyes.

“Alright, what--”

Sarah stopped at the brush of something at her nose. She breathed in sharply, inhaling a sweet perfume. Her eyes shot open.

“For you, sestra.”

Helena’s giant grin caught her eye first, then the bouquet of flowers hovering under her own nose.

“Oh.”

Sarah just sort of stood there, baffled. Helena took her hand, pressed the bouquet into it.

“Thank you,” she eventually said, several seconds of uncomfortable silence later.

Helena’s grin widened. The white of her teeth seemed to catch strands of sunlight.

“When was the last time you stopped--”

“--and smelled the roses?” Sarah chuckled. “Little on the nose, yeah?”

Helena shrugged.

“Maybe.”

She backed up a step and spun in place, gesturing in every direction, making a show of it.

“But look. Look at all of this, Sarah. Look at what you built. None of it would be possible without you.”

Sarah didn’t bother to look. She exhaled slowly, disgusted.

“You think I should be proud of Columbia? You think this is _worth_ something? A floating rock in the sky where human beings are treated like animals?”

Helena’s shoulders slumped.

“There are good people here, sestra. There is hope for Columbia. Maybe not in this world, but somewhere.”

This was Sarah and Helena; two sides to the same coin. In the infinite expanse of time and space, Helena saw the hope, the light, the warmth, the wonder of life, the heartbeat of the universe. Sarah saw the despair, the war, the death, the darkness in the heart of mankind, the million _million_ worlds that would burn to ash.

Sarah had only taken her eyes off her sister for a moment. When she turned back, Helena was perched on the city’s edge, legs dangling off the side. Thousands of feet of empty space below her.

“Helena!”

She yelled on instinct. Helena turned back, startled and confused.

 _Of course_. There was no danger, and Sarah knew that. Since the incident, the rules of reality no longer applied to them. They could be anywhere at any time.

“Sorry,” Sarah said awkwardly. “Hard to get used to this.”

_Besides…_

“Sometimes I forget we’re already dead.”

Still, the fear of death doesn’t go away so easily. Or the fear of loss.

“Mm. And alive,” Helena added. “We are a little like the cat.”

Helena seemed to lose herself in thought as she stared off into the horizon. There was an uncomfortable quiet. Not total quiet, of course -- life continued to march on around them -- but what did it any of that mean to Sarah?

“Would you miss me?”

Helena said it so softly, Sarah almost didn’t hear it.

“What?”

Sarah hoped she’d misheard. She found herself suddenly wishing for the silence.

“We don’t know if we can die,” Helena said. She kept staring, a million miles into the distance.

“But if we can.”

“If I fell.”

“If I didn’t stop myself.”

“If I let it happen.”

She raised her arm, sent her pointer finger spiraling down.

 _Whistle. Whistle. Whistle._ _CLAP._

She brought her hands together. Bones snapping against the ground. Sarah shuddered.

“Would you miss me?” Helena asked again.

“‘Course I would,” Sarah said quickly. Desperately. She took a seat next to her, placed a hand on her knee. “I can’t live like this alone.”

She rubbed Helena’s knee in gentle circles, tried to get her to look over to her. Helena kept staring.

Sarah’s heart sunk. She bit down on her lip, hard. The knowledge they shared would swallow their minds whole if they had to bear it alone. Each kept the other balanced. If Helena was beginning to unravel...

“Alone,” Helena repeated, considering. “Look, Sarah.”

She stretched out her hand, pointing to the edge of another of Columbia’s islands, and to the two tiny figures standing there. Sarah squinted. One seemed to be leading the other in a waltz.

“It’s us,” Sarah realized. Another version of them, from another time, from another universe, but unmistakably _them_.

“Yes. There are so many of us. Another Helena and another Helena and _another Helena,_ on and on, into infinity. You would never have to be alone.”

Sarah watched their other selves for a moment -- the ebb and flow of their movements.

“They’re not you,” she declared, knowing it was a silly thing to say.

Helena looked down, then finally over at her twin. _This_ twin. The twin with whom she’d experienced a thousand worlds.

“I would know the difference,” Sarah said.

“Mm.” A smile slowly began forming on Helena’s face.

“So. What you are saying, sestra, is that I’m not like the others. That you can tell me apart.”

Sarah swallowed. It was ridiculous, but…

“Yes.”

“There are millions and billions and trillions of Helenas exactly like me. You could come back to this world, back to this exact second, and find me. The me who is here with you now.”

Sarah hardly knew what she was thinking, only that she believed it without question.

“She wouldn’t be you,” she said. Maybe _she_ was the one unraveling.

Helena placed a finger to her chin. Sarah saw the cogs spinning in her eyes.

“You can tell me apart.”

“Yes,” Sarah said firmly.

Helena’s eyes narrowed skeptically, but the smile remained. She leaned in closer.

“It’s impossible,” she said. _A challenge._ Sarah wasn’t sure if she meant it, only that she knew Sarah would be forced to agree. The science wasn’t there to back up her claim, and she knew it.

_Still..._

Sarah leaned in.

“Guess we’re impossible then.”

Helena scanned Sarah’s eyes for a moment, then nodded, satisfied. She reached out to Sarah’s collar, pulling it out and adjusting it in fluttering movements. She buzzed with an excited energy, seemingly unsure of what to do with it.

The skeptic in Sarah wondered if Helena had already known how she would answer, if it had all been an act.

Helena sprung to her feet.

“Will you teach me?” she asked, eyes bright and wide. She cocked her head toward the pair in the distance, still moving to their own rhythm.

Sarah laughed.

“Guess I already have.”

“Or already will.”

“At some point.”

“Somewhere.”

Sarah rose to meet Helena, who practically hummed with anticipation.

“Might as well be here and now, yeah?”

Sarah reached out and took her sister’s hand.


End file.
